Genesis of an American Gestapo by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
July 16, 2005

“Tyrants have always
some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying
them.”

-- Voltaire

“A dictatorship
would be a heck-of a lot easier; as long as I’m dictator.”

-- President George
W. Bush

Tyranny
has very few indispensable parts: a compliant media that will regulate
information to meet the goals of the state; a “rubber-stamp” Parliament
that will endorse the policies of the supreme leader; a judiciary that
will adjust the law to serve the requirements of the ruling body, a strong
military to seize the wealth of weaker nations; and a security apparatus,
that will eliminate any domestic threats to the system.

On June 29 President
Bush took the great leap forward in transforming the nation’s intelligence
services by ordering a restructuring of the FBI and putting “a broad swath
of the agency” under the direct control of the executive.

Bingo -- Bush’s
personal secret police: an American Gestapo.

The formation of the
new agency was presented as part of 74 recommendations made by the 9-11
Commission on Intelligence. Every member of the so-called “independent”
panel was handpicked by the Bush team, and their proposals reflect the
narrow interests of American elites. Bush loyalists and Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR) members Lawrence Silberman and Charles Robb, (both of whom
were directly involved in the 9-11 whitewash) chaired the committee, and
provided the rationale for the dramatic changes to the existing system.
Astonishingly, Bush was able to unilaterally create the National Security
Service without congressional approval as part of his sweeping powers
under the new anti-terror legislation.

The freshly minted
National Security Service, which has been dubbed the New SS, will operate
under the authority of former ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, whose
involvement in overseeing the terrorist activities of death squads in
Nicaragua will provide him with the necessary experience for his new task.
Negroponte, the new Intelligence czar, will report directly to the
President, who in turn will carefully monitor the violations of civil
liberties that will naturally evolve from unsupervised investigations.

The formation of the
Bush Gestapo overturns long held precedents for maintaining the
independence of law enforcement agencies. Those guidelines have been
summarily discarded by the administration, just as they have been ignored
by the collaborative media. The nation’s steep descent into despotism was
barely greeted with a whimper of protest from the mainstream press. The
editors of The New York Times applauded the changes as a sign of
progress, a step forward in making America safer and “breaking down walls”
between foreign and domestic agencies. This is true; there are many
cumbersome “barriers” between the President and absolute power but, for
all practical purposes, those have now been effectively removed.
Notwithstanding the NY Times’ perky assessment, the deleterious
effects on the American people will be felt for decades to come.

In a Washington
Post article innocuously titled “Bush Approves Spy Agency Changes,”
veteran journalist Walter Pincus makes scant reference to the many civil
liberties groups that fought the creation of the National SS. Timothy
Edgar, from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), criticized the
president’s action saying, “The FBI is effectively being taken over by a
spymaster who reports directly to the White House. . . . It's alarming
that the same person who oversees foreign spying will now oversee domestic
spying, too.”

“Alarming” to whom?
It’s not alarming to the president or his cadre of corporate benefactors
who would rather eschew the nettlesome requirements of the Bill of Rights
to eliminate potential dangers to the state. To them, the emergence of the
secret police augers stability in the markets, eliminating disruptive
elements without recourse to the law. Personal freedom is the sworn enemy
of “top-down”, orderly societies. The Bush Gestapo will ensure that the
decision-making power continues to be entrusted by those who’ve
demonstrated their natural right to lead.

The National
Security Service will have unlimited power to conduct the apocryphal war
on terror anyway it sees fit. The agency will operate independent of
congressional oversight and beyond the bothersome glare of America’s
permanently embedded media. It will provide the requisite muscle for
maintaining America’s one-party system; spying, harassing and intimidating
those dissident elements that dare to challenge the status quo. We should
expect to see an up tick in dirty tricks, coerced censorship and
“disappeared” persons in the wake of the new changes.

General Michael
Hayden, deputy director of National Intelligence, attempted to assuage
fears that civil liberties would be savaged by the Bush brown shirts.
Hayden stated unequivocally that the US no longer had the “luxury” of
maintaining the divisions between foreign and domestic intelligence
structures because, “Our enemy does not recognize that distinction.” In
other words, it’s too dangerous to be free any longer.

Isn’t this the
unavoidable logic of Fascism?

The creation of the
National Security Service comes on the heels of other developments that
are equally ominous. Homeland Security’s Michael Chertoff announced this
week that the 180,000 public employees in the government’s largest agency
would be further corralled under the central authority of the president.
Invoking the pretext of “national security,” Chertoff plans to appoint a
few new agency chieftains (Bush loyalists) who will be tasked at
consolidating the disparate groups under a model of corporate rule. The
changes represent even more power for the president.

Similarly, the
release of a 40-page document from the Defense Department states the
intention of the Pentagon to “expand military activity” within the United
States, a practice that has been banned since 1878 under the provisions of
the Posse Comitatus Act. Americans would be surprised to know that the
administration is maneuvering to sidestep the existing law and deploy
troops inside the country on the president’s orders. Consider, for a
moment, the potential for disaster if Bush is allowed to use the military
as his own private resource: dispatching protestors, patrolling cities and
supervising elections as happens in third world nations. The Pentagon
document clearly “asserts the president’s authority to deploy combat
forces on US territory to intercept and defeat threats.” (Washington
Post)

Sounds like a
military dictatorship to me.

Is there any doubt
where all of this is heading?

The National Security Service, which is an
autonomous, domestic spy-agency, signals a tectonic shift in the political
landscape. The genesis of the Police State marks the end of American
democracy, the final wooden stake to the heart of privacy, security and
personal liberty. Bush’s meteoric rise to power has been accompanied by a
breakdown of traditional safeguards at every juncture, leaving the system
vulnerable to incalculable damage. The message to citizens is clear: all
of the institutions upon which democratic societies depend (the executive,
the Congress, the Judiciary, the media, the military, and law enforcement)
have withered beneath the Bush onslaught and been reduced to rubble. The
entire system has been corrupted from top to bottom. America is a gaunt,
skeletal figure, rattling around in its cage, ready to be blown over by
the first brisk wind. Democracy is dead.